The Matrix Reloaded (2003) | Sci-Fi Saturdays

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Have you tried turning it off and back on again?

Sometimes a sequel comes along that expands the universe of a franchise in multiple ways. The Matrix Reloaded amps up the events from the original film, while continuing the philosophical and technological themes of its predecessor.

First Impressions

All your favorite characters from The Matrix have returned, and Neo really seems to be flexing his new muscles as The One. There’s more action, more gunplay, and more Agents as it looks like Neo must fight an army of Smith’s. The film looks bigger and badder as humanity continues to fight against the AI overlords in The Matrix Reloaded.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

The Fiction of The Film

In an opening similar to the original The Matrix, Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss) infiltrates and escapes a building inside The Matrix while being chased by Agents. Unlike that original escape where she narrowly misses getting crushed by a truck, here she is shot in the chest by an Agent and dies. Neo (Keanu Reeves) awakens from this dream to see Trinity asleep by his side. Neo and Trinity join Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) as he meets with Niobe (Jada Pinkett Smith) and other Resistance captains. The meeting is disrupted when Agent Smith (Hugo Weaving), who was destroyed by Neo in the previous installment, shows up–claiming Neo has set him free.

Morpheus’ ship, the Nebuchadnezzer, returns to the underground human settlement of Zion. They have been called back by Commander Locke (Harry Lennix) to reinforce the city’s defenses. More than 250,000 machine Sentinels are tunneling towards the city to destroy it. Morpheus believes that the Sentinels will never reach Zion, in part because Neo is The One, a messiah that will save them all from the enslavement of the machines. That night, Zion has a rave in which Morpheus shares the good news of his beliefs in Neo as Zion’s savior. Neo meets with Councillor Hamann (Anthony Zerbe) and Neo discusses various types of control.

Neo gets a message from the sentient computer program known as The Oracle (Gloria Foster), so Morpheus and the Nebuchadnezzer leave in order to reach broadcast depth to connect back into the virtual reality world of The Matrix. Neo meets with The Oracle, represented as a chain smoking black woman, who believes that she and other programs need to work with Neo and the humans. She tells him his path leads into the Machine Mainframe via another program called The Keymaker (Randall Duk Kim), but when he asks questions about why he must do these things, she reminds him that it is impossible to see past the choices we don’t understand.

As The Oracle leaves with Seraph (Collin Chou), her bodyguard of sorts, Agent Smith shows up to fight Neo. Now free of the machine network, Smith no longer wears an earpiece and is able to do as he wishes. He replicates himself into dozens of other characters in The Matrix and all 50-plus Smith’s fight Neo, who manages to escape. Back in Zion, Commander Locke tells the Council that the upcoming attack by the Sentinels will be the worst fight ever. He needs all ships at his command. But some Council members believe in Morpheus and ask two other Captains and their ships to assist the prophet. Their plan involves helping Neo infiltrate The Source, where he can stop the machines.

Morpheus, Neo, and Trinity visit with the Merovingian (Lambert Wilson), a program that manifests as a French aristocrat. He tells the Resistance fighters that because they were sent, they don’t really understand why they are there. He discusses causality, which as a program he believes is the only truth, and that choice is an illusion. He upsets his wife Persephone (Monica Bellucci), with his dalliances, so in retaliation she helps Neo secure The Keymaker. Neo must fight a number of the Merovingian’s men in his chateau, while Trinity and Morpheus take The Keymaker onto the Freeway, a place Morpheus believes is suicide, in order to find their way into The Source.

The captains of the other craft, including Niobe, work to destroy a power station so that Neo can enter a special floor of a building with no stairs or elevator, which has a door to The Source. Commander Soren’s (Steve Bastoni) crew is killed by a mole within their ship. Bane (Ian Bliss) was infected by Smith while in The Matrix and now harbors some of that character’s personality even in the real world. Neo manages to enter The Source and meets with The Architect (Helmut Bakaitis), a program who considers himself the Father of The Matrix. He explains to Neo that he is an anomaly in The Matrix, which is on its sixth iteration. Zion has been destroyed six times before. Each anomaly, which manifest as The One, are to choose 16 females and 7 men from Zion in order to rebuild it after the Machines destroy the humans. Neo can choose to fulfill his part in the equation or save Trinity and allow Zion to be destroyed.

Neo chooses the second option, and flies through the city to save Trinity after she was shot, just like in his dream. He reaches into her chest cavity and removes the bullet, saving her. Due to his choice, there is only 24 hours until Zion is destroyed. Neo tells Morpheus that the prophecy is a lie, and was just another system of control. The crew of the Nebuchadnezzer evacuates as it is destroyed by Sentinels. But having been to The Source, Neo now has the ability to feel and  control the Sentinels in real life. Doing so, he overtaxes himself and falls into a coma. They are saved by another hovercraft which has the sole survivor of Captain Soren’s craft as well, Bane–who is hooked up to a medical bed just next to Neo.

“So it’s really up to you. Just have to make up your own damn mind to either accept what I’m going to tell you or reject it.” – The Oracle

History in the Making

One of the most anticipated films of 2003 was the sequel to 1999s The Matrix, called The Matrix Reloaded. It promised a deeper dive into the virtual world from the first film, while expanding the characters and philosophical themes. It was once again written and directed by The Wachowski’s, who also worked on a number of other media tie-ins released around the same time as the film. These included Enter The Matrix, a video game made initial for the XBox which featured over one-hour of new video footage shot during the filming of the movie, and The Animatrix, a series on nine, short, animated stories that featured tales of the birth of The Matrix (The Second Renaissance) as well as one that was referenced in dialog from Reloaded (The Final Flight of The Osiris).

The Matrix Reloaded also claimed the title of highest grossing R-rated film, usurping the title from Terminator 2: Judgment Day which set the record over a decade earlier. Reloaded would hold this title for 13 years until the release of Deadpool in 2016. As such, Reloaded also became the third highest grossing film of 2003 after the final Lord of the Rings film Return of the King, and Pixar’s Finding Nemo. This is all a bit surprising, since its sequel, The Matrix Revolutions, was released six-months later. Unfortunately, that film only made about half as much money, and was reviewed much more critically.

Reloaded continues to advance both the technical aspect of making action/sci-fi films–with new software and devices for creating the amazing visual effects and stunts–along with the philosophical themes. It delved into the ideas behind both choice and causality, while differentiating between the ways that machines versus the humans of the film think. The majority of the cast returned, including the main characters played by Reeves, Moss, and Fishburne, while adding a number of new roles that would appear in both this film and the immediate sequel. Plus, it would ask audiences to hold onto their seats, as the film set up a cliffhanger which would not be answered for six months, much like the gap between Back to the Future Part II and Part III.

Genre-fication

Sequels like The Empire Strikes Back, Aliens, and Terminator 2, all raised the stakes from their predecessor while continuing to explore the worlds of their franchise. Reloaded did that as well, including a lot of what made The Matrix so successful, but also taking the film to a level of magnitude greater than that of the original. The film starts off with a sequence reminiscent of the first film, with Trinity fighting her way out of a building against an Agent of The Matrix. But this time, instead of a small hotel and a single Agent, it’s a massive skyscraper and multiple bad guys. Each and every moment appears to have been ramped up bigger and better than before.

One of the best sequences in the original film was the bullet-time effects. This was a process in which a character was able to appear frozen while the camera raced around them. With everything being bigger and better in the sequel, it may seem strange that there is no actual bullet time within the film. In the four years between The Matrix and Reloaded, this effect was over-used in everything from films to commercials. This overexposure of the bullet-time technique might be the reason it is not seen in this film, but that’s not necessarily the case. For one thing, in the original film, Morpheus told Neo that when he was ready, he wouldn’t have to dodge the bullets. Neo makes that clear in this film, as the Merovingian’s men unload hundreds of rounds on him, and he stops them all in the air. But Reloaded offers new techniques built from the bullet-time idea that takes everything to the next level.

Reloaded also continues the dystopian look of the future with its dirty and dingy settings and oppressive darkness. A majority of the film takes place in the real world this time, so audiences see the rusty, damp, and extremely well-used technology. Much of the action takes place underground in Zion where humanity has hidden from the machines. Even scenes within The Matrix take place mostly at night or in a dingy playground or alley, with the exception of the Freeway sequence–which still has an oppressive dystopian look. There’s little brightness in the film until Neo reaches The Source, which is bright and inviting–as the heart of the machine world. Here the film introduces the most enigmatic character of the sequel in The Architect. He is the antithesis of The Oracle, and provides fans with so much exposition about the nature of The Matrix, that fan theories would grow exponentially between this film and the follow-up.

Societal Commentary

Neo’s continued heroic journey places him in contrast to the prophecies about him. He still does not believe that he is The One, at least not in the way that Morpheus and the citizens of Zion see him. The people of the last human settlement leave gifts and tributes outside his door. The Kid, a huge fan of Neo–and one that claims Neo saved him–even gives him a spoon as a gift, representative of Neo’s visit to The Oracle in the previous film. But the entire time, Neo questions his choices. Whether that was the choice to take the Red Pill and see further in The Matrix, or his choice in this film to save Trinity and thus doom Zion–and humanity–to (another) destruction. As humans, choice is a quintessential part of life. Every day different choices are made that lead to different paths and outcomes. Sometimes it’s impossible to know where these decisions will lead to, but it is one of the things that makes humanity special according to the film. Choice was found to be necessary by The Architect in order to get humans to accept The Matrix. Without a choice, humans could not, or would not, engage in the programs created by the machines.

The Merovingian, however, sees the act of choosing as an illusion. He sees choice as the effect caused by those in power, such as himself. He is a program and part of the machine world, so his power over the humans appears absolute to him. And since the machines control the humans, their choices–according to him–don’t amount to much of anything, as they are the ones being controlled. It’s all part of causality in his world. Cause and effect between an action and a response. To him it’s not a choice, but a simple response to stimuli, as a machine would see it. What the Merovingian fails to recognize is human emotion. The love, the pathos, the hate, and the joy that all humans experience which often leads them to their choices. Decisions can become illogical, and that may be where the machines will fail. The coldness of The Matrix is contrasted with the sweatiness of Zion in this film. The humans fill a cavern with their heated, passionate rave, while the Merovingian’s sexual encounters are cold and calculated. The humans express their emotions even during times of stress and hardship, while the programs and machines believe they still have the power.

This power exerted by the machines is all about control of the humans, which comes in many forms. There’s the physical control they exert, having humans hooked up to cables and using them as batteries to power the mainframe. Within this is The Matrix, which exerts a mental control over the populace to make them ignorant of the primary layer of control. Neo questions The Oracle in this film regarding her place in the system. He worries that as a program, she is part of the machine world, and another layer of control. After being told the truth by The Architect, Neo lets Morpheus know that the prophecy of The One is fake, and just another system of control. Even Councillor Hamann and Neo have a discussion specifically about what control is, while looking over the machines of Zion. Neo believes that the humans control the machines of Zion that provide the heat and air, and that they do not control the humans. Hamann uses the Socratic method to state that of course, they could destroy these machines, enacting that control. But Neo sees through the Councilor’s argument, realizing that there is a symbiosis between them. The humans do control the machines, but they also need them to survive. Perhaps the greater system of control is an illusion perpetrated by the machines. For if the humans are needed by the machines in order to provide power, perhaps there needs to be greater cooperation between the two.

The Science in The Fiction

The Matrix Reloaded has new technological advancements both in-universe and without. This film reveals that the humans’ experiences in The Matrix are not on their first go around. There have been five other versions of the system, each which contains a version of Neo (the anomaly), the free-human encampment of Zion, and a closed loop that would lead to the destruction of the majority of the species with a reboot to start over again. It seems The Architect’s plan is to use this anomaly as a self-correcting mechanism. His goal was to program the system for the anomaly to empathize with humanity so that when the choice comes, he would pick entering The Source and saving a portion of Zion for another iteration of The Matrix. Thus Neo becomes a glitch–a bug–in the system of The Matrix, and the only way to squash it, is to control its interactions and use the results of one iteration to inform the next. But this version of Neo is different from the others as The Architect realizes. He doesn’t just revere humanity, but one individual in particular, which changes things. The film doesn’t address these specifically in this story, but it seems clear that Neo’s attachments, and his choices, will make the outcome of this version of The Matrix different from its predecessors.

Reloaded also incorporates new computer technology in their film about the perils of computer technology. While there is no bullet-time effect per se, both Neo’s fight against the Smiths (also known as the Burly Brawl) and some of the effects on the Freeway sequence, involve next level digital techniques. The Wachowski’s and visual effects supervisor John Gaeta devised a virtual camera to create the ability to create effects that surpassed bullet-time. Digital CGI characters had been around for over a decade, but they were mostly relegated to existing photographic plates shot on stages or on location. The new virtual camera was created along with digital doubles, which were able to replicate human actors in a virtual world that looked more like a video game than a film. The camera was no longer tethered to reality of a physical place, and as such could create scenes that supersede what bullet-time could do. The Burly Brawl is the best example. While it seems a little more plastic-like by today’s standards, the freedom of the all-digital space allowed for a greater range of action and camera movement, creating a truly memorable scene.

The Final Frontier

One of the fun little tidbits in The Matrix was the explanation that deja vu is a glitch in the program.  Reloaded also has a fun revelation that supernatural creatures such as werewolves, vampires, and ghosts are programs that have run rampant and are doing things they’re not allowed to do. The Twins (Neil and Adrian Rayment) show off some incredible abilities as a pair of ghosts within The Matrix. As with some of Neo’s powers, they are able to transcend the physical laws of the system in order to become incorporeal, avoiding bullets, swords, and car wrecks.

There was one immediate sequel to Reloaded, called The Matrix Revolutions, and was filmed concurrently with this film. It seemed like the most cost effective way to gather the cast and crew necessary for such a sprawling film. It allowed the filmmakers to shoot a lot of the footage for the minor characters at the same time. But this was not without its problems. Gloria Foster, the actress for The Oracle, passed away before she was able to shoot her footage for Revolutions. A replacement actress was hired for the third film, and also for her scenes in the Enter The Matrix video game. The video game actually features an explanation for the change in the characters appearance between films, which will be touched on in the article for Revolutions.

Being the middle film in a planned trilogy of films, The Matrix Reloaded ends on a cliffhanger. The fates of the main characters are all up in the air, and questions abound. Will Neo be able to save humanity? What does the possession of Bane by Agent Smith mean for the real world? Does Zion actually fall to the machines? How does it all end? Fans speculated wildly for six months, filling message boards and forums with detailed analysis of this film and predictions for the future. Based on personal knowledge, not many of them got it correct, and many ended in disappointment for the way that the franchise ended. But then, it was not the audience’s story to tell. Remember, we all have a choice about how to view entertainment and should never assume the path is set.

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